Pin Up TattoosClassic Tattoos That Never Go Out of FashionThe male gaze has long been recognized and documented. Men have been admiring beautiful women since way back. You could almost say that as soon as thumb tacks were created the modern pin-up girl was born! With this newly discovered invention could found pictures of mens ideal vision of women hanging in changing-room lockers, bedrooms, grubby little offices and workplaces of grease monkeys the world over! Old School pin up tattoo © Alenka Wagenaar The term pin up model first came into common usage in the early 1940's but has been documented as far back as the 1890s. Back then they didn't have the glossy magazines of the 20th Century but that didn't stop men from portraying what their ideal woman should look like in the form of drawings, then photographs and later mass produced calendars.  1950's style pin up tattoo © Chris Stans The image of the pin up girl became so ubiquitous particularly amongst GI's and other service men in the 1940's that it was adopted by some of the legends and celebrities of the era. Most notable of these was Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth whose pin up style was burnt into the minds of popular culture and emblazoned across the noses of countless spitfire aircraft.  Sailor girl pin up tattoo © Mez Death Head In the 1950's the pin up girl reinvented herself as a more risque female who wasn't afraid to flaunt more of her body. Bettie Paige is the person who typifies this era and style. She wore much more revealing bikinis than her predecessors and wasn't afraid to get it off occasionally. Her image like those who have gone before her have been memorialized as tattoos on countless arms and legs.  Classic dancing girl style pin up tattoo © Gavin Rowbottom It was inevitable that tattoos of old school pin up girls (although still quite popular) would transform into a modern version of this old classic. Like all trends and fashions the cues would be taken from the popular culture of the time. So highly stylized pin up girls started to emerge like strippers and burlesque performers slipping out of a club at dawn. Vampires and characters such as Elvira and demented nurses with blood filled syringes also started to emerge out of the further reaches of the collective unconsciousness to be as popular now as they were with sailors, GI's and the working man of the 1940's.  Old School pin up tattoo © Joe Capobianco
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